Hoosick Falls superintendent: ‘I offered to take a fine’

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Hoosick Falls superintendent Ken Facin said today he did everything he could to enable the students on his boys’ bowling team to participate in the state tournament, but to no avail.

“I offered … to take a fine and to take a letter of admonishment, even though as superintendent I’m not intricately involved with the paperwork of the athletic department,” Facin said in a 15-minute phone interview this afternoon after his school’s appeal was denied.

“It’s not like you can be involved in every facet of your organization,” Facin added, “but the bottom line is I am responsible for the operation of the school district. So I asked that and said, ‘Please let my kids bowl. There was no competitive advantage here.’

“We submitted information from medical doctors that had seen these kids. It wasn’t like they matured after the season started. They were ready, according to the specs of selective classification, to bowl when the season started. It was truly a paperwork situation that doesn’t leave the district.”

The two eighth-graders both competed in the section tournament. One of them, Josh McCart, was the second-high scorer behind senior Joe Wolfrum, who will be advancing to the state tournament as an individual for a third time. The other, Stephen Surdam, bowled the final four games, contributing 790 toward the Panthers’ six-game team total of 6,060. Lansingburgh had 6,005.

“They earned this,” Facin said. “There was no competitive advantage. There was no malicious intent. It was self-reported that we were wrong.”

Section II officials were merely enforcing the rules that exist statewide in all sports. Students who have not reached their freshman year must be pass maturity and physical tests before the participate in a varsity sport.

In bowling, the physical test is competing in nine games of rolloffs and finishing in the top eight.

“We’ll hope that we don’t we have to run into these kinds of issues again,” Section II president Paul Jenkins said after receiving the Commissioner of Education’s verdict.

“In the end, the kids who did nothing wrong get punished for this,” Section II boys’ bowling coordinator Bill Neumann said. “It’s a pretty severe penalty. I wouldn’t mind seeing them change that — maybe it look over and say disqualification is too serious a penalty, maybe have it some kind of fine.”

That’s what Facin was hoping through his appeals process, but it didn’t turn out that way.

“I’ve had a longstanding issue with the operations of athletics at both the section and state level, because I feel it’s too adult-centered,” Facin said. “It’s disheartening that our student-athletes and their parents are hurting right now. My athletic administration erred, and we accept responsibility. We’ve done those things that we need to do to correct it. There should be adult consequences, and the students should be allowed to participate.

“We asked for that, including, I asked for a monetary personal fine that was met with resistance.”

Because today was a snow day in Hoosick Falls, Facin said he would talk to the team Friday.

“It’s an unfortunate situation,” he said. “There are a lot of lessons to be learned. It’s a teachable moment. My kids are learning the value of honesty, the value of integrity. That supercedes all things. If the consequences come out against your, chin up, eyes forward, and we try to get better every day. Those are the discussions we’ll be having with our kids.

“We wish Lansingburgh the best. Our students are learning the adults don’t always do the right thing. We didn’t do the right thing in this case. We reported it as soon as we knew that. We’re going to live with these consequences, but I don’t want my kids to be bitter about it.”